Forrest Gump

Don’t get Lee started on this one. I enjoyed it, but thought its huge success was weird. Highly overrated, and not one of Tom Hanks’ best performances, much less Oscar-worthy. Morgan Freeman was robbed.

Fort Apache

The first of John Ford’s “Cavalry Trilogy,” all starring John Wayne, the second being She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and the third Rio Grande. It’s not as good as the second one, but it’s pretty damn good. Henry Fonda steps out of his usual character to play stiff, bitter, and ultimately disastrous Colonel Thursday, newly in charge of the ... Read more »

Fosse

In 1978 Bob Fosse created a show called Dancin’. “Created” seems the best word for it, as there was no plot, just segues between dance numbers, of which there were a lot. I guess there was some singin’ in the show, but basically it was exactly what the title said. A whole lotta dancin’, all of it choreographed by Bob Fosse himself. As far as I know, no recording ... Read more »

Foul Play

We were inspired to see this again after watching Dudley Moore in Arthur, and remembering how good he was here in his first American film. He had made several films in England, including the fantastically funny Bedazzled with his comic partner, Peter Cook, but this film put him on the road to being an unlikely romantic star. It was this ... Read more »

The Fountain

The “story” is incomprehensible. The pace is slow as a glacier. I didn’t like the main character—of which there are three incarnations, but let’s don’t even get into that. The music is monotonous. The science is silly. There’s something about a “Tree of Life,” apparently from the Bible, and Queen Isabella of Christopher Columbus fame, and her conquistador lover, and a scientist whose ... Read more »

Four Brothers

Same old story, starts out good, gets stupid at the end. Most impressive scene: a car chase in the snow on icy streets. This was shot in Detroit and Canada, and the Trivia section at the IMDb informs me that the temperature never rose above 24 degrees during shooting, and that all the snow, including the falling snow, was real. I’m dubious. If it’s snowing when you do your ... Read more »

Four Days in November

Probably the first major documentary about the Kennedy assassination, made well before the massive conspiracy industry had really gotten off the ground. It recounts the events leading up to the killing, showing a great deal of footage I had never seen before. There is no chatter about the grassy knoll, Castro, the Mafia and such, which is just as well. I concluded long ago that it’s ... Read more »

The Four Feathers

This is one of the all-time great adventure films, done on a grand scale, in Technicolor. It has a cast of thousands, and they are employed to great effect in the huge desert battle scenes. Whatever you do, do not, do not take a look at the horrible 2002 remake. It will leave a bad taste in your mouth for months.

That said, I have to mention that almost ... Read more »

Four Feathers

Perfectly awful, especially if you’ve seen the classic original. Completely misses the point time after time and omits the best parts of the story. Avoid this at all costs.